The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett [52]
“Aye! Because she’d earned rrrespect!” The gonnagle’s voice seemed to echo around the stones.
“Please, I don’t know what to do!” wailed Tiffany.
William stared at her. “Ach, weel, yer no’ doin’ too badly so far,” he said, in a nicer tone of voice. “Ye got Rob Anybody out of marryin’ ye wi’oout breakin’ the rules, and ye’re a game lass, I’ll gi’ ye that. Ye’ll find the way if ye tak’ yer time. Just don’t stamp yer foot and expect the world to do yer biddin’. A’ ye’re doing is shoutin’ for sweeties, ye ken. Use yer eyes. Use yer heid.”
He put the pipe back in his mouth, puffed his cheeks until the skin bag was full, and made Tiffany’s ears bubble again.
“What about you, toad?” said Tiffany.
“You’re on your own, I’m afraid,” said the toad. “Whoever I used to be, I didn’t know much about finding invisible doors. And I resent being press-ganged, too, I may say.”
“But…I don’t know what to do! Is there a magic word I should say?”
“I don’t know, is there a magic word you should say?” said the toad, and turned over.
Tiffany was aware that the Nac Mac Feegle were turning up. They had a nasty habit of being really quiet when they wanted to.
Oh, no, she thought. They think I know what to do! This isn’t fair! I haven’t got any training for this. I haven’t been to the witch school! I can’t even find that! The opening must be somewhere around here, and there must be clues, but I don’t know what they are!
They’re watching me to see if I’m any good. And I’m good at cheese, and that’s all. But a witch deals with things….
She put the toad back in her pocket and felt the weight of the book Diseases of the Sheep.
When she pulled it out, she heard a sigh go up from the assembled pictsies.
They think words are magical….
She opened the book at random, and frowned.
“Cloggets,” she said aloud. Around her, the pictsies nodded their heads and nudged one another.
“Cloggets are a trembling of the greebs in hoggets,” she read, “which can lead to inflammation of the lower pasks. If untreated, it may lead to the more serious condition of Sloke. Recommended treatment is the daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep.”
She risked looking up. Feegles were watching her from every stone and mound. They looked impressed.
However, the words in Diseases of the Sheep cut no ice with magic doorways.
“Scrabbity,” said Tiffany. There was a ripple of anticipation.
“Scrabbity is a flaky skin condition, particularly around the lollets. Turpentine is a useful remedy—”
And then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the teddy bear.
It was very small, and the kind of red you don’t quite get in nature. Tiffany knew what it was. Wentworth loved the teddy-bear candies. They tasted like glue mixed with sugar and were made of 100% Artificial Additives.
“Ah,” she said aloud. “My brother was certainly brought here…”
This caused a stir.
She walked forward, reading aloud about Garget of the Nostrils and the Staggers but keeping an eye on the ground. And there was another teddy bear, green this time and quite hard to see against the turf.
O-kay, Tiffany thought.
There was one of the three-stone arches a little way away; two big stones with another one laid across the top of them. She’d walked through it before and nothing had happened.
But nothing should happen, she thought. You can’t leave a doorway into your world that anyone can walk through, otherwise people would wander in and out by accident. You’d have to know it was there.
Perhaps that’s the only way it would work.
Fine. Then I’ll believe that this is the entrance.
She stepped through and saw an astonishing sight: green grass, blue sky becoming pink around the setting sun, a few little white clouds late for bed, and a general warm, honey-colored look to everything. It was amazing that there could be a sight like this. The fact that Tiffany had seen it nearly every day of her life didn’t make it any less fantastic. As a bonus, you didn’t even have to look through any kind of stone arch to see it. You could see it by standing practically